This enlightening episode delves into the practical applications of self-compassion. Renowned researcher Kristen Neff shares her expertise on the power of “fierce self-compassion” and how it can benefit individuals, leaders, athletes, and healthcare workers alike. Contrary to misconceptions that self-compassion is a sign of weakness, she highlights how it can build inner strength and resilience, leading to improved well-being and exceptional performance.

She cites a study on NCAA athletes who embraced self-compassion and achieved exceptional results. Listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the transformative impact of self-care and inner kindness, and how it can help us overcome challenges and achieve our goals. Don’t miss this episode that offers practical tools to enhance your performance and well-being through the power of self-compassion.

 

 

ABOUT MARC’S GUEST

Kristin Neff received her doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley, and is currently an Associate Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.

During Kristin’s last year of graduate school she became interested in Buddhism and has been practicing meditation in the Insight Meditation tradition ever since. While doing her post-doctoral work she decided to conduct research on self-compassion – a central construct in Buddhist psychology and one that had not yet been examined empirically. Kristin is a pioneer in the field of self-compassion research, creating a scale to measure the construct almost 20 years ago. She has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential research psychologists. In addition to writing numerous academic articles and book chapters on the topic, she is author of the book Self-Compassion: The Proven Power of Being Kind to Yourself, and her latest Fierce Self-Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive.

In conjunction with her colleague Dr. Chris Germer, she has developed an empirically supported training program called Mindful Self-Compassion, which is taught by thousands of teachers worldwide. They co-authored The Mindful Self-Compassion Workbook as well as Teaching the Mindful Self-Compassion Program: A Guide for Professionals. She is also co-founder of the nonprofit Center for Mindful Self-Compassion.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Marc Lesser: Welcome to Zen Bones. Ancient wisdom for modern times. This is Marc Lesser. Why Zen Bones? Our world is in crisis and ever-shifting, and now more than ever, more wisdom, clarity, and courage are essential, especially in the world of work, business, and leadership. Kristin Neff has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential psychologists, with her research and writing on self-compassion.

She holds a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley and was recently an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas in Austin. In today’s episode, we talk about the practical applications of self-compassion for individuals, leaders, athletes, and healthcare workers.

Kristin uses the word “fierce self-compassion” to dispel any sense of compassion being soft or a way of avoiding difficulties. In fact, just the opposite compassion, or what she, at times, calls resilience or building inner strength is a path of both well-being and exceptional performance. I hope you enjoy today’s episode.

[00:01:24] Marc:  Kristin Neff, it’s a pleasure to get to see you again.

[00:01:28] Kristin Neff: Nice to see you again, Marc. Absolutely.

[00:01:32] Marc: I still picture our– we met when I brought you in to teach a search inside yourself, you were a guest teacher where we brought you in virtually into a class in Australia.

[00:01:47] Kristin: Oh, that’s right. Yes.

[00:01:50] Marc: I immediately felt this sense of alignment and just appreciation of you and your teaching. It was great you brought a real vulnerability that I thought has touched me.

[00:02:05] Kristin: Thank you. The business world is still a little slower to catch on the self-compassion, but they’re getting there.

[00:02:13] Marc: I still quote you, one of the things I remember you saying is that the business world still, I think it’s not just self-compassion, it’s compassion in general, that the business world, and I get it. One of the things that I believe you said is, you sometimes will substitute the language of building inner strength, which I thought was brilliant, and it’s one of the things that I find myself doing a lot in the work that I do. I don’t generally use the word Zen, for example. I replace Zen with being a full human being, for example.

[00:02:54] Kristin: Good. It works. Not being a full human being.

[00:03:03] Marc: Not being a full human being.

[00:03:05] Kristin: Both. Yes.

[00:03:07] Marc: I think this is a good segue into compassion and self-compassion, and I’ve always appreciated the way you unpack what you mean by self-compassion, which is the combination of mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness, which now I think we need to start with mindfulness. I want this to be as useful to anyone listening, but I think this topic is so– again, it’s one of those things that, it’s easy to say self-compassion, but it’s hard to practice.

[00:03:48] Kristin: It is. One of the reasons why mindfulness is so necessary, and this actually, you might say temporarily, the first step of self-compassion, just in terms of the word passion, the Latin means suffering communes with how are we with the tough stuff, the difficult emotions. It could be physical pain. It could be something happening in one’s life or thought of inadequacy. The reason we need mindfulness is because we usually don’t want to go there.

We’re doing one or two things. Either we’re ignoring it and just pretending it’s not there. It’s just like soldering on, or we’re lost in it. We’re identified with it, and there’s no perspective from which to say, “Well, maybe I could use some self-compassion right now.” That’s why I think it doesn’t really come naturally because what is more natural is either to avoid pain or get lost in it.

That’s why that really is the first step, to notice. It’s like if a friend called you and either you ignored your friend’s call, “I’m not going to listen to my friend. “Your friend’s compassion, or if your friend calls you and you just immediately just start talking over them and not listening. You also can’t keep your friend’s compassion. I often use a metaphor of self-compassion as being a good friend to yourself, and the first step is to listen, which is mindfulness.

[00:05:04] Marc: I noticed that metaphor, which is the opening of your latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion, is that metaphor about why would you talk to yourself any differently than you would to your trusted friend, to your good friend? It’s like, man, it’s amazing how when people start paying attention to how we talk to ourselves and– fascinating.

[00:05:29] Kristin: What would happen to your friend if you talk to them the way you talk to yourself, wouldn’t go so well, wouldn’t be very helpful. Yet, somehow we think magically it’s better for us. It’s not a logical process. I think there are reasons for it why people lack self-compassion, both cultural and probably even evolutionary, probably the way our brain works as well.

[00:05:48] Marc: There’s a lot of parallel, obviously, parallel overlap and similarity in the work that we do. I have a new book that’s about to come out, about compassionate accountability. The title of my book is Finding Clarity, but it’s about accountability and compassionate accountability. The essence of accountability is noticing, not avoiding difficulty, not avoiding difficult conversations.

[00:06:20] Kristin: That’s right.

[00:06:21] Marc: I often go back to the evolutionary that we’ve evolved, that we are descendants of the nervous apes, that we scan for threats, but not only externally. My theory about this is that this scanning for threats is internal as well, and this is why we need self-compassion because we’ve evolved as part of our evolution to be checking ourselves, talking to ourselves, this negative self. The inner critic is something that comes easily to us.

[00:06:55] Kristin: It’s very natural. Luckily, compassion also comes easily. Of course, that mainly evolved for others, for our infants, so we pass the jeans down or our group members. Whereas what happens for us is more the threat system, but that’s why it’s nice. It’s actually not very difficult to do. It doesn’t come naturally. We’re doing a hack. We’re using the system that evolved, the care for others, compassion, and we’re treating it inward, and we’re treating ourselves like we would treat someone else.

Again, we don’t want to beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up because it’s natural, but it’s just not very effective that we know, just like with others, compassion is more effective than harsh criticism. Compassion, not meaning letting things slide. Compassion can hold people very accountable. I love that idea in your new book because that’s the biggest block to compassion, is people thinking they won’t be holding themselves accountable. It couldn’t be farther from the truth. I’m so glad you’re doing that.

[00:07:54] Marc: It’s interesting that, as I say in the book, accountability has a bad rap. When the phrase that comes to mind when you say accountable generally is lack of, or people think of it as that dreaded performance review. You’re going to be held accountable. To me, accountability is really about, a sense of alignment, and not only aligning with others, but aligning with yourself, bringing how you want to be showing up with yourself. How can you become loving not only a friend but how can you love yourself?

[00:08:35] Kristin: Yes, absolutely. We aren’t accountable if we don’t have compassion because we either want to blame others, or if we’re feeling shame, shuts down our ability to understand what’s going on, we just want to hide in our hole. It doesn’t help to take responsibility at all. Quite the opposite. We want to hide.

[00:08:54] Marc: I’m jumping in now too. I’m thinking, I’m listening to this, and I’m someone who is very self-critical. I’m very hard on myself. My inner critic is thriving. What do you recommend? What’s the practice? What’s the advice? What do you do to work with that?

[00:09:14] Kristin: I think the first thing to do is we want to honor the role of the inner critic. Again, we don’t want to think I’m a bad person. I’m broken because I’m critical, as opposed to self-compassionate. Understand that your inner critic is there for a reason, is trying to help you, is trying to motivate you. It’s trying to help you grow. It’s trying to keep you accountable, trying to help you from making the same mistakes again. It’s just not very effective.

That’s the main problem with the inner critic. We want to move from harsh blaming, shaming, criticism to constructive criticism. Constructive criticism helpful feedback comes from a place of friendliness, and differentiating my behavior from my worth as a person. Just because I made a mistake doesn’t mean I am a mistake. It doesn’t mean I’m worthless. My worth is unconditional. From that sense of unconditional worth, then we’re actually more able to work on our behavior, so it’s more effective and less harmful to others and to the extent that we can.

I talk a lot about myself in my books. I’m reactive. I’m just wired that way. After 56 years, after a lot of mindfulness practice, it still comes up. I just work with it. Actually, I’m starting to tell people ahead of time that I know this may come up. Don’t take it personally, which is a way of being accountable. If they know ahead of time, I don’t take it personally if I’m reactive, and I apologize immediately.

I’m working with it as opposed to– because I tried it and I tried to change it. Whatever reason it’s just the way my neurons function. When you acknowledge it and you tell people and try to reduce the harm of it, it’s a B plus. It’s good enough. That’s one of the things that my self-compassion practice has given me. It is somewhat better. Compassion does help you change, but with those things that we can’t change, we can’t change everything. It just helps us make the best of the situation and reduce harm.

[00:11:09] Marc: I tend to think that we’re all amazingly reactive or vulnerable tender. I think we all have incredibly tender hearts. It shows up in all kinds of ways. I was even thinking how if I reach out to a client of mine, and if I don’t hear back immediately, it doesn’t take long before I’m thinking, “Oh, what did I do wrong? They’re going to stop working with me.” For me, as that thought comes up, part of my practice is that how interesting that I’m thinking that I’m feeling that it could be that, it’s very– No, I have a good relationship with this person, and the fact that they’re taking a day or two to get back to be like, “Let it go. Let’s try and be more forgiving and friendly with myself around this and not this my inner worrywart that can come up.”

[00:12:13] Kristin: Which, of course, is just trying to keep you safe. You would ask how to approach it, first with compassion for your inner critic, which is just trying to keep you safe. Then the recognition that it’s actually not an effective way to use it. If you want to shut down and get rid of the inner critic, it’s just going to rebel. Thank you for trying to help me. What would be more effective? You might think, what would be the most effective way to motivate your child or good friend? Constructive criticism, knowing that, Hey, I’m here for you. What help do you need? This is really the key thing people don’t understand about self-compassion, is it gives you the sense of safety needed to learn from your mistakes.

It’s a truism, failure is our best teacher, and yet somehow we think we aren’t supposed to fail. We think that because we feel shame when we fail. When you take shame out of the equation, it’s not shameful to fail. It’s part of the learning process, then you can learn and grow. I just had a study just accepted a few days ago with one of my– who was my dissertation student. Now she’s Dr. Kuchar, but we trained, or she trained NCAA athletes and self-compassion. She didn’t call it self-compassion. She called it inner resilience. It was all the same practices from the Mindful Self Compassion Program.

When athletes, and by the way, their standards, they have to be the best. They might lose their scholarship if they are not. Their standards are super high. Self-compassion doesn’t mean lowering your standards. It means, okay, if I blew a game or something wrong in my training program, that’s okay. It’s only human. What can I learn from this? It’s like we use the metaphor of a really supportive, encouraging coach. What a really supportive, encouraging coach say to you? What we found is it improved their performance, both self-rated and coach-rated performance. It actually helps you improve. It does not undermine your performance at all, which is such a big fear.

[00:14:09] Marc: Yes. No, that’s great. What a great place to be working with NCAA athletes, which I think there’s a lot of commonality there. I would hope that business leaders reading that study could identify with that. Again, this drive, this need to succeed. You have to succeed. You have to show up as competent. These days it’s interesting. Not only do you have to have good financial results and project management, you have to be a good listener and a good coach, and a good mentor. I get to work with people who feel like they’re failing there. They’re getting feedback that they don’t.

It’s great if you could bring in the evidence of this study. If you can have more of a learning mindset, it actually improves your performance, which is like, Wow, how great.

[00:15:05] Kristin: It’s also intuitive if you think about it. Well, of course, that’s true. Because of the way we’re wired, you don’t think that way.

[00:15:13] Marc: Well, it’s interesting too, as I was relating this to the example that I brought in about my fear of losing a client, that the way to lose clients is to be afraid. I always think if you’re interviewing for a job, you’re strongest if you get in with this sense that you don’t need anything. It’s all a learning. What can I learn from this interview? It’s not about success and failure.

[00:15:44] Kristin: That’s right. It’s about learning and growing. Absolutely. That’s going to help you succeed. It’s like the hidden gift.

[00:15:54] Marc: Yes. Well, [laughs] there’s so many places where my mind just went to three different places. One is it went to that you mentioned you’re about to go do a retreat around nonduality. I was also coming back to this word mindfulness, which you call one of the core pillars of self-compassion. My mind also went to, it’s a little bit like when you’re doing meditation, there’s some motivation. You might not call it success necessarily, but you might call it, I want to grow, I want to develop, I want to be better at, I want to let go of my duality about fear of failure, wanting to succeed. When I then sit down on the cushion, I need to let go of all that.

It’s this cultivating a more pure learning environment outside of the realm of success and failure. Am I doing it right or wrong? It’s interesting these different points that all are. In a way, there are different kinds of, I think, approaches to mindfulness or approaches to embodying a nondual way of being in the world.

[00:17:13] Kristin: Yes. That’s the common humanity component you were talking about the three components is mindfulness. The kindness is self-evident, that’s being a good friend to yourself. The reason I have common humanity is my model. I didn’t come up with self-compassion. I was learning mindfulness meditation at a Thich Nhat Hanh sangha. Thich Nhat Hanh was one of the teachers who always talked very explicitly about self-compassion. Thank God, if I had gone to a mindfulness-based stress reduction place to learn mindfulness, I probably wouldn’t have been on this path.

This group talked a lot about self-compassion and also about interbeing. In fact, I actually wanted to call the third component interbeing, but I knew most people wouldn’t understand it outside of a Buddhist context, so I called it common humanity. It really serves two functions. One, it actually reduces focus on the separate self. I know a lot of Buddhists, like we coil from the term self-compassion because they think it strengthens the self, the ego, and therefore it’s counterproductive.

We could have called it no self-compassion, because when you give yourself compassion, what you’re doing is, first of all, you’re seeing yourself as part of this larger hole, all the causes and the conditions that lead to our what happens moment by moment, which is, if you think about having compassion for someone else, part of that means recognizing, yes, there are a lot of situational factors, maybe genetic factors, family factors, a lot of things that lead people to do what they do. You don’t have to blame someone as bad just because bad behavior arose out of their experience. It’s less of an ego focus. The research supports that.

The more self-compassionate you are, the less self-defensive you are, the less ego focused you are. Also, the feeling that we’re alone. This related part of the ego, when we have this false sense of ego, is we think it’s just us. That’s attractive in a way because we have the illusion of control. It’s also incredibly painful because we feel cut off from the larger whole. When you remember, hey, we are part of a larger whole. It’s not just us. That is wrong with us. We’re experiencing suffering. It’s not just me. That’s really what differentiates self-compassion from self-pity. It grows in a sense of connectedness. It’s not the opposite.

[00:19:37] Marc: I imagine you’re familiar with this. These are instructions from Dogen, who is the 13th-century founder of Zen in Japan, who I think very brilliantly said, “To study the way is to study the self, and to study the self is to go beyond the self.” Or it’s sometimes translated as to forget the self.

Coming back to self-compassion could almost translate to study self-compassion is to study the self and to study the self is to go beyond the self. I like to substitute, says to study the Way, and it’s the way with a capital W. To me, it’s like to become a full thriving human being is to study the self. To study the self is to go beyond the self. This is so much aligned with what you’re just saying about this, your criticism about calling it self-compassion, but it’s the same.

[00:20:37] Kristin: More appropriately, I would’ve called it inner compassion, directing compassion inward as well as outward. I wanted this to be in a mainstream psychological context. I also wanted to compare it to self-esteem, which is a way of reifying and valuing or judging the self positively. When I talk to my Buddhist friends, they often say, “Just call it inner compassion if you don’t like the word self” because that’s really what it is. The more you direct compassion inward, the less of a self is there.

My goal was always to reach the person who wasn’t Buddhist, who wasn’t into contemplative practice, who totally just is out there suffering and judging themselves. I think the language is more effective for all people, even though it’s a little bit of an oxymoron if you think about it.

[00:21:25] Marc: It’s interesting that the NCAA study is around resilience. Was it resilience, or was it inner resilience? How did you–?

[00:21:32] Kristin: Called it inner resilience training. Resilience enhancement and sports education and sports– I forget the name, but RESET was the acronym because when you have a failure or a struggle, you do a reset. It’s like you give yourself some kindness. You remember you aren’t alone. You pay attention, you turn toward, you learn, you get constructive criticism, and then you’re more able to learn and grow and improve, which is so important if you’re an athlete.

[00:22:01] Marc: Before we started recording, I was remembering you use the expression building inner strength, especially in the business world where there’s still some– compassion doesn’t quite ring true in a lot of business settings. I get that, although I have to say more and more, I’m bringing in the L word, love. What about [unintelligible 00:22:22]? It’s not a romantic love, but it’s a deep respect for the people that we work with. That has to start with us, has to start with this kind of deep love, respect for ourselves, so building inner strength, building resilience.

[00:22:42] Kristin: I think one of the reasons the word compassion, people don’t like it is because it seems soft. Then when you realize that compassion, being an ally to yourself as opposed to an enemy, that’s actually going to make you stronger. My latest book, Fierce Self-Compassion I talk a lot about gender role socialization. Part of the issue with business is it’s even though more and more women are in the workplace, of course, the culture is still aligned with traditional male stereotypes.

When I talk about fierce and tender self-compassion, tender self-compassion is about acceptance. Acceptance of ourselves, of our difficult emotions, of our pain. Fierceness is about taking action to alleviate suffering power, motivating change, meeting our needs. Traditionally males have been socialized to be fierce but not tender, that really works against males. Just to be clear, I’m not talking about biological sex or even gender identity but just socialization.

This socialization says men can’t be tender and women traditionally can’t be fierce. People don’t like angry women. They think they’re crazy or they’re too competent or too powerful. They like the soft nurturing woman but it’s like yin and yang. Everyone needs both. Of course, we need both [unintelligible 00:24:04] socialization. I think that’s really playing a role in the workplace. It’s like a female thing, doesn’t belong in the workplace that belongs in the home. That’s such wrongheaded thinking but so entrenched in our culture, even at the subconscious level or unconscious level that it really stands in the way I think.

[00:24:23] Marc: I recently co-facilitated a retreat for wildland firefighters and a lot like– these were hotshot high-level athletes and there were half men and half women. It was really fascinating. It was interesting to see that I felt like the women tended to be very tender and very fierce at the same time. I think their image was that they somehow needed to be more fierce and less tender men. Of course, the men that would come to such a retreat tended to be tender men. However, they often said that when in their work roles, they turned into flaming assholes.

They didn’t like that about themselves but they felt like they had to be, again, I think the socialization of men in those kinds of roles, they felt like they needed to be. It was a huge, I think, surprising really try-on– What if you don’t have to show up in a macho barking out orders way. Sometimes that might be appropriate because these are people working in crazy difficult emergencies. The challenge of how to bring your whole self, your full loving self, and at the same time respond effectively in these very high-pressured situations. Not so different. Again, not so different than NCAA athletes and not so different than people in the corporate world, leaders in the work world.

[00:26:08] Kristin: Also, in environments of relationships as you might think of more traditionally about tender acceptance, that could lead to problems if the fierce aspects like drawing boundaries. One of the reasons I was inspired to write this book, and the same at people who are socialized or raised as women because it was just too difficult to talk about because for what– people raised as men, they aren’t allowed to be tender. People raised as women they aren’t allowed to be fierce. I wrote it for women, fierce self-compassion for women.

It also came out of the #MeToo Movement. If you think about why was it for so long that it was so hard for women to speak up, there’s a lot of reasons. Some is just the consequences, or they wouldn’t be believed. Part of it is because we are socialized not to speak up, just to be tender and accepted. That’s just the way the system is. That’s the way men are. People aren’t going to like us. We aren’t supposed to get angry. We’re just supposed to be so forgiving. That really worked against women.

If we want equality in human rights for everyone, we need both tender acceptance of our humanness and fierce action to try to change unfair, unjust situations so that they aren’t harming people. Both are true simultaneously. Again, the yin and yang metaphor works so well. It’s like yin is the tenderness, yang is the fierceness. Of course, we need both. It’s crazy that we say that one gender and then maybe the only way we can have harmony is in a heterosexual relationship. What’s that about? What happens when that doesn’t work out so well?

[00:27:50] Marc: This word fierce and the socialization aspects of it. In a way, the paradox. It’s the paradox of– I’m often saying that want people to be highly ambitious when it comes to solving real problems or it’s like athletes. You need that drive to succeed, to win, to want to win. It’s interesting, I’ve been leaning recently on my– I was captain of my high school wrestling team. A big aha that I had as a teenager was that the best wrestlers, the ones who were the state champions, were not caught by winning and were not fearful about losing in the same way that I noticed I was. I got tight.

I got tight by what that my fear of losing or my desire to– There were even times when I would be winning and I would hold on to win and run out the clock. It was like, “Something’s wrong here. I need to work. I need to learn. I need to train myself to just enjoy what I’m doing and to see it as a dance and not so much being caught by success and failure.”

[00:29:15] Kristin: That all comes from ego identification. I separated out get acceptance is acceptance of ourself and the action is more about behaviors and situations. Once we start defining ourself by behaviors and situations, are we winning? Are we losing, or other people? Then that’s where the problem occurs. You can be as fierce as you want and try to win as much as you want but you don’t identify with that. Your worth isn’t contingent on it. That’s one of the biggest differences between self-esteem and self-compassion is your worth is unconditional. Doesn’t mean your behaviors are unconditional. Of course, if you’re harming people, you want to change behaviors in situations, but your worth as a human being is independent of that. That’s when you let go of ego identification and your value comes from simply being.

[00:30:09] Marc: Yes. Kristin, just so that I make sure I’m understanding you, you’re saying that self-esteem is more ego-driven, that it’s–

[00:30:17] Kristin: Yes. Depends how you define it. This word esteeming the self, judging the self, am I worthy or not worthy? That’s about the ego. Some people talk about unconditional self-esteem, but I think once you’re unconditional, it’s really no longer esteem. The word is inappropriate. That might be unconditional self-worth. Self-esteem is you have to be special and above average or you have to be successful or you’ve got to be attractive or people have to like you.

One of the things the research shows pretty clearly is the more self-compassion you have, the less your self-worth is contingent on comparison or success. It doesn’t mean you’re less successful. That contingency actually stands in the way because again, you get performance anxiety because if I win or lose, it’s going to say something about me. If it’s not, then it’s like, “Okay, I’ll just win or lose. Doesn’t say anything about me. If I lose, I’ll just learn from it.” No, anxiety, no pressure.

[00:31:19] Marc: I’m wondering in terms of those NCAA athletes, any big prizes in terms of how it was that they learned or got this or saw making this– it’s a big shift. It’s a big transformation from the usual conventional way. Of course, it’s all about me to that it’s somehow not like, how do you make– how do I often think it takes many years of practice, of mindfulness practice, but sounds like fairly quickly these athletes made a shift that you saw real results.

[00:31:56] Kristin: Yes, so Ashley Kuchar, who was the dissertation student, she did this as her dissertation. She used to be a college-level basketball player, so she knew the culture. Again, really just framing it as how to learn better. Athletes, they like to win. If they want to be better, what they really like is useful information that will help them improve their game. That’s really the bottom line.

Everything was framed as what’s going to help you improve your game? Talking about judging yourself, criticizing yourself, it actually works against you. Letting go, you know what? Letting go of what it says about you. How can I learn and grow from this? They really got that message. They liked that message. Again, so it wasn’t really, not using the word self-compassion, talking about resilience, learning, sports enhancement, enhancing your game, then they were all in. There was very little resistance.

The other big thing she did was she taught them as a team, including the coaches who were there. There was a cultural shift. There was cultural buy-in to it. Which is really important because otherwise, I think the larger culture says it’s all about me. That seemed to also really make a difference.

[00:33:08] Marc: That’s fascinating too. It’s both individuals, but it’s also as a team creating what’s the culture, what are the cultural forces? If you can shift the playing field to become a learning organization as opposed to– this was from, I think of the work of Peter Senge that he did the book from 30 years ago. The Learning Organization. That language was a break breakthrough. This sounds like–

[00:33:38] Kristin: That’s right. Interestingly, we had similar results with healthcare. We have a healthcare training for healthcare professionals. In healthcare, the culture is self-sacrificed. How many shifts did you work straight? It’s all about focusing on others. Training healthcare organizations to be more self-compassionate or reduce burnout, for instance.

[00:33:59] Marc: That’s great.

[00:34:00] Kristin: Increases turnover. It’s the same thing because the lack of self-compassion is partly determined by the cultural environment. The best way to help people be more self-compassionate is also to help change the culture. It also helps you support the practice.

[00:34:16] Marc: Well, Kristen, and I feel like maybe this is part one, there’s so many things we could do.

[00:34:23] Kristin: Yes, we could go on forever.

[00:34:25] Marc: Is there anything you’d like to do or say as a way of closing?

[00:34:29] Kristin: Well, maybe just to say that there’s a lot of technology out there now to learn how to be more self-compassionate. I teamed up with Chris Germer, my close colleague over a decade ago to figure out ways to help people be more self-compassionate. We have workbooks, we’ve got trainings, and so it’s not just like wishful thinking, “Oh, I wish I could be more self-compassionate.” There are concrete, empirically supported tools to help you be so.

If anyone’s listening and this strikes a chord, just probably the easiest thing is to Google self-compassion and go to my website as a starting place. There are concrete, again, empirically supported practices you can do to help make a change. It’s not just a good idea. It is a practice.

[00:35:13] Marc: Yes. Well, thank you for your courageous, groundbreaking work that you’ve done about self-compassion. It’s really important. I think it’s really personal, cultural, and societal, much, much-needed work. Thank you for your time today.

[00:35:31] Kristin: Thanks, Marc. It’s been lovely.

[00:35:32] Marc: Okay. Take care.

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[00:35:39] Marc: Listen in each week for interviews, teachings, and guided meditations. You’ll receive supportive tools for creating more meaningful work and mindfulness practices to develop yourself, to influence your organization, and to help change the world. Thank you for listening.

[00:36:03] [END OF AUDIO]